Suckers

Gary Bettman (pictured here) and Daryl Katz must think we're idiots.  Rexall Place sells out for every Oilers home game, and Phoenix is a more viable team because the hockey rink is so much better, empty though it is every night?

Edmonton taxpayers might be willing to put up some money for a new rink, if we can make sure we get value for the money, but I don't think Edmontonians are going to respond to blackmail.  Gary, you didn't do the case for a new rink any favours on Saturday.

March 29th?

Prime Minister, I want to quickly remind you, as I did a few years back, that you legislatively stripped yourself of the power to call elections at random times without a defeat of your Government.  It's possible your 2008 election call only violated the spirit of the bill, but not the letter, but it's worth noting that since it was your government's idiot bill in the first place, maybe you should make some effort not to violate it at all.

Having said that, if you're so attached to going to the polls in March, I'm certain you can arrange to have your government attempt to pass something so terrible that you can lose a vote in Parliament, and then complain about the alliance among the socialists and separatists that forced your hand.  The scripts write themselves!  But if you could see your way clear to delay by even a few weeks, I could really use the time to get the next Gaffe-o-Meter up and running.  I know you won't want to deprive the world of that, and you surely don't want to deprive my employer of my full time and attention.

Thanks in advance.

Why do I have to go all the way to New Zealand to get my dose of Gwynne Dyer?

Dyer tends to be pretty on the nose about things.  He says Hosni Mubarak is done, and he'll be leaving Egypt soon. 

So what happens once Mubarak leaves? Nobody knows, because nobody is in charge of this revolution.

One thing that's come clear - Western governments, including our own, who have not dared to risk their favoured relationships with the friendly dictators who run the place now, will not be asked for advice when Egypt forges a new path.  Let's at least be wise enough to give full-throated support to the democratic process, so that even if a government not to our liking emerges, Egyptians will retain the tools to replace them without going to this week's extraordinary measures.

Edited to add, Feb 5: In answer to the title question, I don't.

Steady, Eddie.

I think we're going to miss Ed Stelmach as Premier.  I think we have too few people in politics who sincerely see public service as service, but I think the Premier does.  And I think if Ted Morton is next in line, as some have suggested, followed by Danielle Smith, we're going to be thinking fondly back to the Stelmach era for years to come.

It's been a while...

... not only since I posted, but particularly since I posted bearish predictions about the real estate market.  However, with Jim Flaherty's announcement yesterday, I think the moment has arrived.  Home Equity Lines of Credit are no longer insurable by the CMHC.  The CMHC won't insure 35 year amortizations.  HELoCs have been reduced to 85% of the total equity in your home.

Last year, Flaherty also made mortgage rule changes, tightening qualification rules, and it pushed demand forward enough that the last half of the year has been very slow for the real estate business (forget the news stories from the last couple of weeks spun out by the real estate and banking industries, because even a cursory examination of year-over-year numbers from the last few months will show the supply of buyers drying up).  The same effect might happen again, once again creating the appearance of a boom, but don't be fooled.  Once these rules take effect, the path down will be clear to anyone who can see it.  The only question is whether the Tories can sneak in an election before the housing market, the consumer debt market, and as a result the retail reno market, dries up and slows the entire economy with it.  This is going to hurt.

Killing the messenger

I'm not surprised the American government would like to see Wikileaks shut down. What I'm surprised at is how easily non-government actors fall into line to help out.

Fundamentally, Wikileaks is a news gathering organization, and yes, a quarter million classified documents is news. Wikileaks didn't break confidentiality by publishing the documents, because they aren't required to hold these documents in confidence. Sure, the US government of the time wanted to keep the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, too, but life is filled with disappointments.

Now, as private organizations, Amazon and PayPal are under no obligation to help Wikileaks work, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what principle Wikileaks has violated to earn this sort of exceptional scrutiny. I can't think of one, myself - they received confidential documents, and they're publishing them.

Anyway, they can continue to be found here. Twitter has proved extremely useful, as their opponents try to play hide and seek with the site, but since this is an IP rather than domain name, it should hold solid.

As for my title, well, some take it more literally than others.  Can you still collect a paycheck from the University of Calgary after advocating the murder of a newsman?  Apparently so.

Seen in the Wikileaks dump

Here's a memo relating a conversation between a State Department official and the then-head of CSIS, Jim Judd. Judd expresses concern about the about-to-be-released video of Omar Khadr's interrogation by Canadian officials. The specific concern was that:

...the images would no doubt trigger
"knee-jerk anti-Americanism" and "paroxysms of moral outrage,
a Canadian specialty," as well as lead to a new round of
heightened pressure on the government to press for Khadr's
return to Canada.

But not to worry, reassured Judd. The Canadian government could hold firm on being deaf to the concerns of citizens.

What else we got?

Regarding Alexander Keith's IPA

Dear Labatt's:

If I wanted to drink Ontario piss water, I already have plenty of options. I guess Corb Lund is right, again.

Congratulations, Toronto!

On the heels of Calgary electing a progressive, urbane young Harvard-educated professor, Toronto also commits to a new direction.

Rob Ford, fat f*ck.

Rob Ford isn’t repugnant and offensive because he’s fat. Being fat is only one part of a full package of traits that trigger disgust and apprehension in anyone who doesn’t pick fights with the press, doesn’t assault his wife (charges dropped), doesn’t lie about getting shitfaced and telling off civilians at a football game, doesn’t call AIDS your own f*cking fault, doesn’t praise Orientals for working like dogs, doesn’t drive impaired in his natural home, Florida, and isn’t a boorish, backward daddy’s boy. And he’s fat.  [asterick in place of the letter "u" is mine - Don]

I'm sorry, that's His Worship, Mayor Rob Ford, fat f*ck.  Enjoy!

Congratulations, Obama and Harper!

The American and Canadian governments have avoided the embarrassment of trying Omar Khadr.  Now they don't have to explain why throwing a grenade on a battlefield when most of your compatriots have been killed by the attacking force can be called murder, why a child soldier should be tried as an adult, and how being buried under a pile of rubble didn't prevent Khadr from throwing the grenade in the first place.  Further, they won't have to explain why they began torturing Khadr while he was still blind and broken from the battle.  The Canadian government won't need to explain why they didn't provide consular services to a citizen.  They won't need to explain why they made no effort, unlike every other western nation, to repatriate a citizen from Guantanamo.

So, to everyone involved in this case who have self-awarely sacrificed Khadr on the altar of saving face, eat a bag of dicks.

Happy, happy surprise

I met Naheed Nenshi over twenty years ago, working long days on a campaign until late each night, when I would give a few members of the team a lift home in my old rattletrap of a car.  I don't doubt some of his committment to safe, reliable public transportation was formed while he listened to the whine of my engine struggling up 36th Street, drowning out the strains of Pachelbel or Meatloaf, depending on the evening.

As I write this, Naheed is showing a 6000 vote lead with about half the polls counted, though given Barb Higgins' early lead, I don't think it's safe to call it over yet.  But Calgary seems on the verge of making an excellent decision, very possibly electing a whip-smart, visionary young man.  Tell him "Duke" says hello.

Edited to add: Congratulations, Naheed!

To virtually no one's surprise

It turns out the Tories are a bunch of lying liars who lie.  I still can't figure out why they've bothered.  Do they really have such an ideological hate on for the long-form census that this is the hill they're willing to die on?

You know, during the 2006 election, I kept hearing how the Sponsorship scandal was evidence that the Liberals had become too arrogant, and how some bench time would remind them they need to answer to Canadians.  It seems like less than five years in government, and the Conservative government is well overdue that same lesson.

I understood their battle on the long gun registry.  Never mind that it's many degrees cheaper to administrate than it was to set up, or that law enforcement agencies were lining up to beg the law-and-order party to keep the registry as a tool in the police arsenal.  Never mind all that, because the Conservatives had made a commitment to their base, and in particular to the farmier portions of their base.  It's tough to entirely fault them for attempting to follow through, even if they got involved in some pretty ugly tactics in the process.

But the long form census?  Who did they promise this scrapping to?  Who cared about this issue, until the Conservatives decided it was a good idea?

Well, as we discovered today, no one cared, outside of a few nutty constituents who warmed up their pencil crayons and sent the government a good scribbling.  I don't doubt a couple of those came pre-packaged with tinfoil and hat assembly instructions, to help out.

So I ask again, without irony or preconceived answer.  What am I missing on the benefit side of the calculation, that the Tories continue to feel is worth this ever-steepening political cost?

Funny/Sad

The Fraser Institute sends Paul Wells an invitation to a $200-a-plate fundraising lunch, using data produced from the long-form census in the pitch.  Four days later, they send another fundraising request, bragging about being on the cutting edge of wanting to tear up the mandatory long-form census.

Drink up!

Surprise!

British PM David Cameron comes out and calls Gaza a "prison camp".  Someone call Stephen Harper and let him know that you can be a Conservative without giving Benjamin Netanyahu a "ready, aye, ready" every time Israel's government does something stupid or mean.

Gooooooooooooooooaaaaaaallllllll!

A right-wing wacko explains why soccer is anti-American, and therefore beloved by the liberal media.  Sure does make me want to cheer for the USA side, to make tea partiers crazy.

Crazy Talk

I am almost certain that this is just nonsensical blog talk, as opposed to serious consideration.  Why the CBC is reporting this merger talk nonsense, already rejected by the leader of the Liberal party as "absurd", as anything but punditry wankage is beyond my understanding.

Calgary Grit has made the arguments and done the math, and if the only point of an NDP-Liberal merger is to win the election, well, there's no reason to believe that the merged party would accomplish that (though a Liberal-Conservative merger would be tough to beat).  (Forgive the huge poach from that post, Dan, but I think your point here needs to be widely understood.)

Let's run a quick experiment on the 2008 vote totals. Let's say 80% of the Liberal vote decides to vote for the new Liberal Democrats and their catchy Red and Orange colour scheme, 10% votes Conservative, and 10% stay home and watch American Idol. For NDP voters, I doubt the transfer would be quite as fluid - after all, the new party would be led by a Liberal and if NDP voters really cared about stopping Harper or being in power, they'd just vote Liberal in the first place. So, maybe half of them go along with the deal, a quarter vote green, and a quarter stay home. In terms of popular vote, that would actually work out to a 73% vote transfer to the new party, similar to the PC-Alliance merger rate.

So what would be the end result of this?

CPC 163 seats
LD 93 seats
BQ 50 seats
Other 2 seats

Hell, let's assume 80% of both Liberal and NDP voters join the new party, with the others just staying home - not a single former Liberal casts his or her vote for the Conservatives. The end result is still a narrow 7-seat Harper minority.

For the record, as longtime readers know, I favour the "catchy Red and Orange colour scheme".  But the rest of the merger idea is just dumb, and seems once again timed to distract from real issues dogging the Conservatives.  Could the Liberal Party be more dimwittedly self-destructive?

Edited to add: Evidentially, prominant Liberals agree with me, and are stepping hard on this foolishness.

"But nobody else has to!"

This is the thinking, rejected by kindergarten teachers everywhere as a sign of social immaturity among their charges, that passes for Israeli foreign policy these days.  Israel is rejecting the UN's request for an investigation of Monday's flotilla raid:

An official in the prime minister's office said there is "no case in recent history" where a democratic country's army involved in the deaths of civilians in an overseas operation has been subjected to an international investigation.

Since most democratic countries' armies aren't killing civilians overseas as a rule, this may be objectively true.  But let's remind ourselves of one Canadian experience with it, which resulted in murder charges and a half-decade of national soul-searching.  So maybe, instead of telling us what they won't do, Israel's government could tell us what they will do, and maybe they could try to sound at least a little apologetic while they're at it.  Except that contrition would suggest the possibility of guilt, and it seems that the golden rule of Israel's foreign policy is to never, ever admit fault.

Isolation

So, perhaps my initial reaction was too strong, too angry, and certainly too unrealistic.  However, I've been clear enough about my feelings that I have objected to much of Israel's behavior toward its neighbours in the occupied territories and beyond over the last decade.  I've said as much on this blog on occasion.  I believe that Israel's government prefers bullying its neighbours to learning to get along with them.  I'm offended at how strongly the world believes that Iran's nuclear ambitions are a threat to world peace, but that Israel's current possession of nuclear weapons isn't, as if the former wasn't a direct result of the latter.  I haven't faced accusations of anti-Semitism, which I appreciate, and yet I've seen other more popular writers face that charge when they write similar things on their own blogs, so clearly I haven't been the staunchest defender of the current Israeli government.  In fact, watching moderates in that government being held hostage by an extreme right owning the balance of power in nearly any coalition keeps me from supporting Proportional Representation in Canada.

So what I have to say now might be dismissed as easily as the fellow interviewed by Global yesterday at the Legislature protest, who said the right things and sounded perfectly reasonable, except that he was wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh over his nose and mouth, obscuring his face, and honestly, could you look more like a scary terrorist to anyone who might have otherwise been sympathetic to what you were saying, you idiot kid?  I digress.

Israel, you're losing friends.  Some of that is for dropping on to a humanitarian aid ship in international waters, guns-a-blazing, in order to enforce a blockade that large swaths of the world are already unsympathetic toward.  But some of it is for your flat denial to acknowledge that you've done something wrong, for your attempt to portray peaceful international political activists as terrorists, and for your continued attempts to claim hatred is the only reason anyone would not unquestioningly swallow your version of events as the unvarnished truth.

There are more ships coming to run your Gaza blockade.  It is probably true that these six ships you boarded on Monday were more interested in bringing world attention to the blockade by loudly defying it than they were in delivering aid.  When the next ships come, you had better find a diplomatic solution.  No tank, no airplane, no nuclear warhead is going to guarantee your long-term security.  That comes from peace, trade, and interdependence.  Your isolation works against all of those things.

Missed opportunity

You know, if we were ever going to take the opportunity to stand up for our NATO allies in Turkey, telling Netanyahu that he was being held here while we investigated his government's attack of a ship flying a Turkish flag in international waters would have been a good chance.

Alternet has a short-and-sweet article to unspin the nonsense Israel's press relations office has been trotting out all day.  And Salon asks "Just ponder what we'd be hearing if Iran had raided a humanitarian ship in international waters and killed 15 or so civilians aboard."  Hat tip to Pogge for the latter.

Friday Night Videos


Via POGGe, via Stageleft, your Friday night video. Enjoy the phat beats of the lying liar (or possibly forgetting forgetter. Will he be asked which one by reputable media?) Jason Kenney.

When they're done asking him about this disagreement between his words and the verifiable facts, will he get out of the way of MPs trying to find out exactly how complicit Canada is in torture? Please? Because I really think we should know.